Stories, images, sounds from David Syring's Summer 2009 research trip to Saraguro.

Dona Mariañita

By David Syring on August 2, 2009 11:33 AM

Mariana
de Jesus Lozano (Doña Mariañita), was a pleasure to
interview. She is an indigenous woman whose mother taught her to bead when she
was 14. She brought out her photo album and showed me pictures of her life--a
lot of pictures of when she was a young woman and underwent the "novio
ceremony" to become married to her husband. Beautiful blue cloths wrapped
around them, a ceremony at the church, a return to the house of her
mother-in-law riding horses in the midst of a procession of musicians including
a drummer and an accordion player. This is a photo of her today. Below is a photo of her about 20 years ago, which she allowed me to reproduce using my camera.

She had many picture of friends who are
foreigners and Ecuadorians from Loja and other cities, including photos of her
friend "Lynn" who is an anthropologist and appears to have been here perhaps 20
years ago. I believe this is Lynn Meisch--will have to follow up on this. The
interview with Doña Mariañita lasted about 45 minutes.

She was working on an all gold,
small-beaded huallca that was commissioned by another woman. She said she no
longer really makes necklaces for the market, because the shop keepers are very
cheap and do not pay enough for her work. She makes most of her work on
commission now, usually with the client providing special beads that she wants
used--for example the metallic gold beads she was using to make this single
color necklace were very small and fine and had been purchased in the U.S. by a
member of the client's family. Doña Mariañita will receive $30 for her work
(she would get at most $20 from a shop-keeper in town, and she would have had
to purchase the beads herself). With her permission I took several photos of
her and the work as we talked. I asked if she makes necklaces for herself (she
does) and if she makes them as gifts for friends. This last brought some
interesting information. She does not make necklaces as gifts, she says,
because she is very poor, and can't really afford the beads or the time for
such an extravagant gift. She said the large gold huallca she is making will take her two weeks of on and off work,
with perhaps two hours a day of labor, because she can't sit for longer than
that. She does, however, make the narrow loomed bracelets one sees here as
gifts for her friends. She had one she was working on, and she wanted to gift
it to me, but it was neither finished, nor quite large enough for my wrist. She
retrieved a basket from inside that had some beads, and which she thought had a
couple of other bracelets she had made, but they were gone. "Los chicos," she
said, meaning that her sons had taken them for their own uses.

She allowed me to take photos of a couple
of her old photos, including a shot of her mother and father some years ago.
She pointed out with pride all of the things in the photo that were her
mother's artesanias--including several
de colores huallcas that appear to
have been very much larger than the models I see women wearing now. Other
artesanias included woven wool blankets, belts, red ponchos woven in the colors
traditional to Cañar, and, of course, her mother is spinning with a hand spindle in picture. Her mother is looking at her spinning work, not the camera,
as if she could not take time away from this basic task even to pose for a
moment for what is clearly a family portrait--an interesting glimpse into the
work-focused mind of this woman. Everyone else in the portrait is looking at
the camera, the father with something of a smirky scowl. The elder brother even
holds the family puppy so that it is looking at the camera, but the mother
focuses on her handwork. Later I found out from Anita that Doña Mariañita's
mother, whose name was Asuncion Lozano, was the first woman in Tuncarta to make
beaded necklaces. Anita thought that Linda Belote might have known Asuncion.